“We need to leave now, Jeff!” was all Megan could say as she kept turning in her chair with the gun in front of her, as if not quite sure which grisly monster to shoot at first. The van was starting to rock back and forth.
Jeff turned back toward the shopping cart and scooped up an armful of items. “Help me with this shit and we’ll get the hell out of here.”
“Jeff…please!” He could hear the desperation in her voice and knew Megan wasn’t about to move out of the driver’s seat. She repeated the word “please” over and over, her voice rising. Jeff’s arms were a blur as he dug into the cart and tossed more of its contents into the minivan. The thuds of fists were becoming more insistent, like the sound of a hailstorm. He didn’t look up as he kept his hands moving from the cart to the van in rapid succession.
“JEFF. WE HAVE TO LEAVE RIGHT NOW!” Megan spit out the words as she attempted to turn the key in the ignition with shaking hands.
“Just one more second! I almost have everything!” Jeff grunted as he tried to grab hold of more than his hands could manage. Cans and bags of chips spilled onto the ground as he shoveled what he could into the van. A buzzing sound filled the air, and the van jolted as the engine turned over. Jeff recognized the noise and saw the automatic door beginning to close. He also saw Megan fumbling with the gearshift.
Dropping what was left in his hands, he dove through the closing door and heard the sound of metal on metal and squealing tires as the van shot away from the entrance of the drugstore. He grabbed an armrest and held on tight as Megan whipped the Odyssey around the parking lot. There were several loud thumps as the infected were pushed out of the way. The minivan bounced erratically and then corrected, stable again on four wheels. At least one of the bodies had fallen in front of the vehicle, and Megan did not stop as they rolled over it. The side door finally clicked shut, and the buzzing noise disappeared.
Swinging the steering wheel frantically from side to side, Megan avoided the larger clusters of bodies attempting to grab for them. Several more stiffs were knocked to the side as the van swerved out of the parking lot, hitting the small ditch surrounding it and popping up onto the street. Everything Jeff had just tossed on the seats scattered to the floor and went rolling around the cargo area. He joined the supplies and landed ass-up on the floor. From his vantage point, he could see nothing and had a hard time crawling back to a sitting position.
“Calm down, Megan! We’re going to crash!” he tried to yell over the still-squealing tires and revving engine. Jeff could not hear his own voice as he grabbed hold of a seat to pull himself up. The van finally straightened out, and the disheveled man was able to slide into the front passenger seat. He was barely settled when Megan slammed on the brakes, nearly sending him through the windshield.
“Enough!” Jeff yelled, this time loud enough for her to hear as she gunned the engine and wrenched the steering wheel around to weave in and out of the stationary traffic. Megan jumped at the sound of his voice, but her eyes did not move off the road. She slowed slightly but retained her death grip on the steering wheel as the van darted around stalled cars and lunging bodies. As they moved farther away from the intersection, the cars remained an issue, but there were fewer ghouls to dodge.
“Ease up just a little bit,” Jeff tried again, placing a hand on Megan’s shoulder. She viciously shrugged it off, and he acted as if she had slapped him, backing away slowly. “Okay, okay. Sorry.” He leaned down and picked up the.357, which had fallen to the floorboards. “If NASCAR ever gets rolling again, I’ll be sure to sign you up.”
It did not elicit the smile Jeff had hoped for, but the intensity in Megan’s eyes seemed to drop a notch. Holding the wheel steady she reached over, and pulled her seatbelt on, which made him relax a bit more. Her driving was steadier as they weaved in out of the clog of vehicles and headed down the road. A random path of destruction continued from structure to structure, but the vehicles were starting to thin out as the survivors moved on.
The duo was silent as Megan continued to dodge the occasional persistent plague victim. She clipped a couple at first, but the few figures on the road were getting easier to avoid.
The sloping hood of the van had several sizeable dents in it that were splattered with something that looked far too thick and runny to be blood. Jeff was staring at the new paint job when the minivan swerved again, and he heard a muffled thud as another body went spinning off into a ditch, pirouetting as it was knocked away by the hit. He watched, fascinated by the creature’s single moment of grace before it fell and disappeared from view.
“Sorry,” Megan whispered. Jeff cocked his head to the side, unsure of what he had heard. “I’m sorry,” she repeated, glancing at her passenger for a moment.
“Screw that. You did great,” he smiled, relieved that the tension between them was broken. “I meant what I said: you drove this puppy like a pro. I would have probably smashed into one of those wrecks back there.”
Megan didn’t share the smile, but her chest puffed up slightly. They sat in silence for the next few minutes, content to look out the windows. As the van crept along, they saw fewer corpses, less of the infected, and a stretch of road with no more wrecks or abandoned vehicles.
“So?” Megan said after a while. She waited for Jeff to look at her before continuing. “Gallatin then?”
He nodded. Gallatin was due east and out toward the country. The town was a mirror image of Milfield, except it was smaller and still held onto its rural roots. There were plenty of trailer parks, farms, and big undeveloped plots of land out that way.
Jeff stared out at the surrounding landscape, which looked deceptively normal. The woods were a bit thicker along the stretch of road they were driving, the houses more spread out. As long as he didn’t look too closely, it was easy to pretend things had gone back to the way they were before the virus paid the world a visit.
They went over a rise in the road, and the daydream was shattered. The trees fell away and they were moving past another neighborhood no different from any of the others the two refugees had seen before. It was a mishmash of damaged properties and those left untouched. Several of the infected were milling about and turned to look as the vehicle rolled by. The sad wretches tried to follow but never got close, and Jeff watched them disappeared in the rearview mirror.
He gave brief directions to Megan. They would take one of the less-traveled routes with the hope that it would not be too congested with stalled traffic. It would lead them directly to Gallatin.
Jeff fiddled with the radio as they rolled along. He began with AM, pressing ‘seek’ and letting it run through the static. It lapped the entire band with no results. He switched to FM and repeated the process. There was nothing, not even an automated emergency broadcast. Those messages had been looped to play over and over, nonstop, when all the live broadcasts had vanished. Even the recorded voices had disappeared off the airwaves.
Megan reached over to turn the radio off. Jeff had already sat back and was staring off into space. He barely noticed when the hiss of static disappeared.
He snapped out of his trance a few minutes later when Megan slowed the car and turned left. The intersection was clear of traffic, though several cars and eighteen-wheelers sat on both sides of the road. There were huge crease marks on many of the vehicles, as if something like a bulldozer had pushed them out of the way. As he looked, he spotted no heavy machinery in the area. There were a few sideways skid marks on the asphalt, but no other hints as to what might have happened.
As they left the crossroad, Jeff dismissed the damaged vehicles and their possible meaning from his mind. He closed his eyes and began to drift off. It felt like only a few seconds later when he heard the van slowing to a stop.
Lifting his head, he glanced at Megan and then looked out his window to see what she was staring at. He was about to shake his head and tell her it was a bad idea to stop there when he saw the expression on her face. He looked a bit more closely at the building near which the
y were parked.
It was a small brick-fronted church with a wooden sign out front. There was little ornamentation to the edifice itself. The roof was pointed, and several long, narrow windows faced the road. A small indentation in the building served as the entryway, with its glass double doors still intact.
Beside the doorway was the one thing that differentiated the church from all the others they had seen on their short journey. It was a tall wooden structure, nearly as high as the doors themselves. From a distance, one might mistake it for a miniature steeple, but the sign out front made it clear what this decorative feature was.
The wooden sign in front of the church was decorated with a circular graphic and the words “Lighthouse Baptist Fellowship” painted in bright yellow letters on a brown background. A picture of a sea cliff with a lighthouse shining down on a rocky shore was carved below the lettering. There was a space for the “Message of the Week” underneath, which read: “Revelations 6:8 And behold, a pale horse, and he who sat on it, his name was Death. Hades followed with him. Authority over one fourth of the earth, to kill with the sword, with famine, with death, and by the wild animals of the earth was given to him.”
“Not very original,” Jeff smirked. Megan frowned but kept looking at the modest doors of the church. There was nothing grand about the place. No stained glass, no bell to summon the congregation, no statues of Jesus. Just a tidy little building with quite a few cars crammed into its small parking lot.
Jeff resisted saying anything else or asking questions. If Megan was saying a prayer for the dearly departed or reminiscing about the good old days, he could manage to keep his mouth shut while she did. He studied the church further and saw that there were no signs of attack around the perimeter or in the parking lot. The area looked clear of bodies. Relaxing, he decided to sit and wait until Megan was ready to get rolling again.
The peaceful scene exploded less than a minute later when several gangrenous congregants burst through the doors of the church, slouching toward them. There was a sharp intake of breath to Jeff’s left as it happened. He, on the other hand, felt surprisingly calm as more and more stiff forms poured out of the building. Most wore suits and what had once been pretty dresses before their owners started to bloat, leak, and weep caustic fluids.
The first woman out the door was gussied up in her Sunday best with several silk flowers still stuck in the wispy gray hair that now floated above her skull like writhing snakes. The flowers retained some of their faux beauty, though they were smudged and smeared with caked grease. Stripes of gore mixed with the soft silken white petals, giving them a zebra-like appearance. She and those that followed limped toward the minivan over the burnt lawn of the church.
Jeff forced his eyes off the growing rabble and back toward Megan.
She was still looking toward the entrance, her eyes moist, though she wasn’t crying. He moved to block her view of the mass of corrupt forms moving toward them, but Megan didn’t even blink when he did.
When she spoke a moment later, her voice sounded far off, distant.
“We were told it would be safe here. They said we should come with them. Why did this happen? I don’t understand.”
“They were infected like everyone else.”
The bitter words caught Megan’s attention, and her eyes refocused on Jeff. She looked angry but also fractured and unsure of herself.
“God couldn’t protect them, Megan. No one could. If you had come here with them, you would have been infected too, no matter how hard you prayed.”
Jeff started to see the cold fire in Megan’s eyes that he had seen before. He wanted to shrink back, but something inside compelled him to push harder.
“God helps those who help themselves.” He jerked his head backwards, not daring to look at the onrush of bodies. “They were lambs led to the slaughter. Hell, it doesn’t even look like they barred the doors. They probably just kept on praying and thought the rapture was coming.”
Megan’s face went nuclear. “You coldhearted bastard! I had friends in there, not that you give a shit!”
Jeff returned the angry look, his peppered with frustration. “Megan, it doesn’t matter if I care! What difference would it make if I said I was sorry they were infected?” He paused, but realized he had already said too much. His face betrayed his regret for a moment and then shifted back to anger to hide his embarrassment. “I AM sorry, okay? Does that make you feel any better?”
Megan’s expression didn’t change. Jeff tried to collect himself and calm down as he heard the moans getting closer. He took a deep breath and reached out to touch her. Megan shrank away, her expression appalled.
“All I really want right now is for the two of us to stay alive. We can’t wait around for God, or anyone else for that matter, to show up and save us.” There was a hint of desperation in Jeff’s voice as he pointed behind his back. “And I really don’t want the good folks from the Baptist Fellowship to take us on home to Jesus. So can we get out of here? Now, please?”
Megan gave him another dark look, her arms crossed as Jeff waited. He looked ready to jump up and push her out of the driver’s seat. The stretch between the church and road was not that big, and many of the stumbling figures had crossed most of it already, their greedy fingers stretching out to clutch at the two survivors.
“I am sorry, Megan. I really am.” Jeff could feel a tingling in his neck where he had been nearly strangled the day before. At the same time, he was beginning to imagine an army of ghouls smashing through the window and tearing him to pieces.
Megan shook her head and took hold of the steering wheel. She stamped down on the gas pedal, and the wheels spit up gravel as they caught hold of the road. Jeff was pushed back in his seat, and his contrite expression changed to one of surprise.
“Why do you have to be such a coldhearted prick?” Megan inquired.
Jeff swallowed hard. He took a deep breath and let it blow out between his teeth before he spoke.
“I’m not trying to be. I’m just more concerned about the two human beings inside the minivan than I am about those things outside of it.”
Megan didn’t look happy with his answer.
“They’re dead, Megan.” Jeff could feel the anger peeking out again and stuffed it back down inside. He shrugged. “They’re dead, or as good as dead.” Pausing, he lifted his eyes to the roof of the van and searched for something to say. He wasn’t really sure what the infected actually were. Medical science hadn’t offered any plausible explanations when the doctors and scientists were still alive to study the virus. But he didn’t need anyone to tell him what he already knew.
“They’re dead,” he repeated as he looked over at her, his eyes sad. “They just haven’t figured it out yet.”
He saw her grip on the steering wheel loosen. Megan was blinking fast, fighting back tears of rage. Seeing that his words were making things worse, not better, Jeff felt the bile of anger boiling up from his gut once again.
“I’ve mourned enough for a lifetime already. I’ll be damned if I’m going to do it for a bunch of people I didn’t even know.” He crossed his arms and stared out the window.
“Maybe you will be damned for it.”
Jeff stiffened at Megan’s indictment. He looked at her and was unable to think of a response. He saw her emotions shift from anger to regret and then sadness. Tears began to roll freely down her face.
Jeff went back to looking out the window as he thought about what Megan had said. His desire to argue was gone, and all he felt was a cold, hard lump of remorse in the pit of his stomach.
As he watched the trees roll by, he leaned his face against the window and thought about what he had become. He had no idea who he was anymore.
Maybe I am damned…maybe we all are.
Chapter 17
They rode in silence, each trapped in private misery. Jeff tried to apologize but clammed up when Megan stiffened at the sound of his voice. So he sat, slump-shouldered, as they moved slowly down the ru
ral road.
Large stretches of the route they took were unpopulated, and a dense canopy of trees stretched to the horizon on both sides of the road. The gaps in the woodlands were filled with modest homes set on large properties, which spread out behind them. They weren’t in farm country yet but were moving farther away from the densely populated suburbs.
Fifteen minutes passed before Megan finally spoke. “Maybe you should drive,” she said in a stilted voice.
Jeff looked over at her, confused.
“I don’t know my way around Gallatin,” she said, her voice losing some of its stiffness.
“Just stop whenever and we can switch,” he replied in an even tone.
Megan looked over at him and nodded, her eyes filled with regret. “Thank you,” she whispered.
Jeff gave her a hesitant smile. When she returned a shy one of her own, he felt the tension drain away. Neither of them had found a way to say they were sorry, but at least there was some kind of understanding between them. Things were going to be okay.
The van slowed to a stop, and the man and woman changed places. As Jeff settled back into the driver’s seat, he spied something glittering in the distance. He looked out the window and squinted in the bright sunshine.
“What the hell?”
Megan was still getting situated when she heard him speak and saw him peering through the windshield when she plopped into her chair. Jeff’s eyes widened, and she squinted to try to catch a glimpse of what he was looking at. After a few moments, she spotted it.
There were human shapes in the distance. Megan blinked and rubbed at her eyes. Despite her best efforts to focus, the figures were not clear. All she could tell was that they were coming up over a hill perhaps a quarter of a mile down the road.
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